


What it Means to Us

by KJGooding



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Deleted Scenes, Gen, Marriage, Post-Canon, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:35:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23297893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KJGooding/pseuds/KJGooding
Summary: After seeing Ezri as a romantic partner, Julian comes to see her as a counselor instead.  He's a lot more talkative than her usual patients, and they have a good, open discussion about love and family.
Relationships: Julian Bashir & Ezri Dax
Comments: 6
Kudos: 10





	What it Means to Us

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Instrument of Grace](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15655593) by [KJGooding](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KJGooding/pseuds/KJGooding). 



> This is a deleted scene from "Instrument of Grace" but you can enjoy it on its own, too!

“Is this the strangest counseling session you’ve ever had?” Julian asked, staring at the ground. 

Somehow, the couch in Ezri’s office was more comfortable to him in that moment than the lounge in the home they shared, even with his elbows digging into his knees, and his palms beginning to sweat against his cheeks. It did not feel right for him to look at Ezri directly, but since this was her area of expertise, he would await her opinion before changing his posture. 

“I don’t tend to define them like that,” she replied calmly. “Everyone’s situation is different; that doesn’t make them  _ strange _ .”

“I mean… because you’re involved… in a way…”

“I think it would help if you looked at me.”

He obliged, and could practically hear his hands tearing away from his cheeks, squelching and definitely  _ strange _ . 

“I’m part of the problem,” Ezri said, with a light touch of humor in her voice, “I believe in facing problems head on. Looking them dead in the eye. Can you do that?”

Julian felt ridiculous, because his first instinct had been to look at her belly, rather than her face. There was nothing visibly wrong he could diagnose from the distance, but it was a force of habit, and it was his child. The added weight was barely detectable at this stage - or so Ezri insisted when she wanted him to stop fussing over her - but Julian could picture the exact shape and texture of the developing tissue inside: soft and malleable, responsive to the slightest imbalance in Ezri’s pleuritic fluid or Dax’s undulating tail, about the size of a pear. How could something so small intimidate him?

“Can you look at me, Julian?” Ezri repeated; he had gotten lost in his thoughts.

“Yes,” he said, as he lifted his attention, at last, to her eye-line. 

“Good. I’m not here to embarrass you.  _ Both of us  _ are here to talk about our feelings, and figure out where we got things wrong along the way.”

“I don’t think we got anything  _ fully  _ wrong,” Julian insisted, but then immediately went quiet. Arguing with a counselor, how absolutely foolish, was he really going to waste this opportunity and--

“I don’t think so either. Is that what you’re most afraid of?”

He looked down again, with just his eyes. His hands still felt clammy, and he flattened them out against the forgiving wool of his uniform, splaying his fingers while he pondered the question. It seemed simple enough, but he could not think of a good response. 

“There’s no wrong answer,” Ezri assured, as if she had read his mind. 

“I suppose I’m…” he chuckled, “ _ most  _ afraid of wrong answers, then, Counselor.”

“Oh, I understand  _ that _ .”

Ezri had no padd on her lap, no recording device of any kind, and Julian tried to relax into the confidentiality - both marital and professional. He was so rarely a patient; his only applicable memory was being a  _ test subject _ . 

“It seems I’m… not sure how to define myself. I’ve always relied very strongly on parameters - a clear definition, a set of rules, some expectation to look forward to, something that someone could watch and verify I’ve done a good job at.”

“Yes,” Ezri said, attentively. “That makes sense.”

“So when I thought about…  _ us _ . I thought about what I expected from a relationship, what I’d seen around me as a young adult, and I thought… we could do that, but it seems we’re not  _ quite  _ what I’d imagined. Is that right?”

He looked at Ezri with more determination, and she waved her hand, welcoming him to continue. She promised it was usually much more difficult to come to conclusions like this with her other patients, and she wanted to hear Julian speak for himself. 

“It seemed like it was right for us to get married, I was  _ sure _ I wasn’t thinking about you as if you were just another Jadzia.”

“I’m sure of that too,” Ezri’s voice was honest and gentle. 

“I mean, you’re  _ completely  _ different, and as I’ve gotten to see you come to terms with that, and offer such  _ compassion  _ to Dax! I thought that was  _ superb _ ; I felt very drawn to that, as it unfolded.”

“Right. We had a lot in common, and it made sense for us to start spending more time together.”

“Exactly. And I thought, after that, a natural next-step was to see one another romantically. But then we began studying alongside one another, we’d argue, but we were civil enough to live together. Then the baby just  _ happened _ , and here we are.”

Ezri shook her head at that, and held her hand forward as she clarified. 

“She did  _ not  _ ‘just happen.’ We planned for her deliberately--”

“--down to the precise  _ minute  _ of your cycle--” Julian interrupted, trying to make himself feel better.

“Right, because we knew we wanted a family. Something we could define for ourselves, so we wouldn’t feel so tied to  _ our  _ parents anymore. We wanted to hear the word ‘family’ and have something pleasant pop into our heads. Something happy.”

Julian could not help but glance at her abdomen again. This time, Ezri was far more cordial about the distraction, and she even set one hand over the small bump, rubbing in a circle until Julian smiled. 

“Well, she already makes me happy,” Julian said, his voice soft. “And a  _ bit  _ frightened.”

“That’s normal.”

“I was discussing it with Elim-- sorry, I shouldn’t bring that into it, but--”

“You absolutely should. Whatever you and I have to sort out, you and Garak have like… ten times more work ahead of you.”

“Maybe so, but I’d like to focus on what this means for us, right now.”

Ezri smiled, and held her hand still. Captivated, Julian watched as her focus seemed to turn inward. He caught the smallest twitch in her knee, the faintest pressure of her fingertip against her tummy, the tiniest glimmer in her eye, as she took a gasping breath and looked at him. 

Ordinarily, he would ask what the matter was, or if she felt alright, but he knew her well enough by now to discern this as a happy moment. The sound was one of surprise, not anguish. Julian slid forward to the very edge of the couch, watching Ezri’s face intently.

“Do you feel her?” He asked, “i-is she moving?”

“Yeah,” Ezri said, cheeks flushing. “Wow, that’s-- I knew it would happen eventually but that’s… really happening.  _ That’s so cool _ .”

“Isn’t it?” Julian replied, while wishing it was a question he could answer for himself.

“Yeah. Come and feel.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes!”

“Will that be a bit awkward?” he asked. 

“Only if you make it that way.”

“Often, I hear of expectant parents being  _ inundated  _ with unsolicited touches, and I’d rather not contribute to the problem, if--”

“I’m soliciting it. You’re my husband; come touch your baby. Hurry, what if she doesn’t do it again?”

Julian practically stumbled out of his seat, and when faced with the obstacle of Ezri’s chair being intended for only a single occupant, he was too determined to give the problem any thought. He sat down on the armrest, leaned over against Ezri’s shoulder, and then gently touched his palm to her stomach, aching to give the impression of a doting husband instead of an inquisitive doctor.

“You sound as though you’d, er, like to remain married,” he noted, positioning his fingers over the precise area Ezri had been touching before. 

“I would,” Ezri replied, tipping her head up toward him, giving him a fond expression. “I’ll break up with Dax before I break up with you.”

“And you care about Dax very much.”

“Right.”

“Hmm.”

He could not say he had a clearer impression of their relationship, yet, but it had been nice for him to get the words out. And he  _ did  _ have the soft impression of the pads of his fingers feeling for his baby’s movement, and that seemed like a sufficient end to a therapy session. Didn’t it?

Ezri brought her hand to cover his - all that she could, anyway, with the difference in their sizes - and she encouraged him to press more firmly. 

“This is… I think this is what I wanted. Just to feel  _ together _ , with someone. Something very ordinary, little moments like this one, every so often,” he said, after worrying he'd been silent for too long. 

“Physical affection,” Ezri confirmed. 

“Normalcy?”

“Everyone is different.”

“But I wouldn’t want to make either of us uncomfortable with it. You’re primarily attracted to women, and I… can’t say that’s a label I would give to myself.”

“Trill gender and attraction are  _ far  _ from binary. Dax  _ adores  _ you, it introduced me to you, and I - personally - can promise I want you to stay in my life.”

“That’s… good. I only get one of them, you know.”

“So do I. So we might as well connect to everyone we love, while we can.”

“You’re not opposed to us having other partners? And… and not being fully romantic with one another, all the time?”

“That’s right. I  _ encourage  _ you to have other partners.” 

“That seems strange to me. It isn’t  _ unheard  _ of, a lot of humans have arrangements like the O’Briens, but… for some reason, I can’t say it’s ever crossed my mind.”

Ezri nodded and tapped her fingers against her belly, but still could not feel any movement beneath them. 

“It’s fairly common on Trill,” she said. “I know, I didn’t grow up there, but I had  _ plenty  _ of distant family who had open relationships. From what I can tell, it’s appealing to Unjoined people - it lets them feel like they’re gaining multiple lifetimes of experience, just from interacting with different partners. As long as there’s no reassociation, I don’t see why Joined people shouldn’t try it too.”

Julian could not resist the academic detour, and he set his hand down on Ezri’s head, stroking through her hair while he thought things over. 

“I wonder if that might be a subconscious way that Trill compensate for their incredible difficulty reproducing and maintaining a diverse population,” he said. “That is  _ certainly  _ the case on Cardassia, but with quite different social repercussions. For example, if two partners cannot conceive a child, both might enter into purely physical relationships with others, and while it’s fairly well-known that these arrangements exist, they’re labeled ‘adulterous’ and used in all manner of political blackmail, and then the children - which their society claims are  _ vital  _ to its continuation - are orphaned. Cardassians can be… contradictory. And difficult to figure out.”

“Well,” Erzi said, playfully, “Garak’s been trying to catch your eye for a decade, Jadzia could’ve told you  _ that _ .”

“She did, several times. I just didn’t want to acknowledge it back then.”

“True. You’ve grown a lot, since then.”

Julian took the compliment with a grin, hoping he did not look too smug. He changed the subject.

“And what about you and Lenara?”

“I don’t know, yet. Dax introduced the two of us, too.” Ezri shrugged. “It might not amount to anything.”

“Oh, I think it will. She’s cautious, sweet, just as concerned for others as you are. That sounds like a perfect match.”

“Hmm,” Ezri was thoughtful, and rested her head against Julian’s arm as she sighed. 

“I’m glad we got to discuss this,” he said.

“So am I.”

When he turned his head, he found he could plant a soft kiss on the top of her head. Her hair was short, roughened by styling gel, but it felt familiar to him, and that was all he sought.

“You really think I’ve, er,  _ grown _ … in the past ten years?” he asked.

“You  _ really have _ . We’re sitting here having this discussion because you’re worried about  _ me _ , and  _ Elim Garak _ , and  _ our baby  _ \- about how all of us feel. You aren’t here to feel better about yourself. But, to your credit,” she said, pressing her head closer against his arm, “you and Dax have  _ always  _ had that kind of relationship with each other.”

“That’s true,” he agreed. “I could always count on Jadzia to bring me back down to earth.”

“Hmm,” she chuckled at his phrasing, and looked down to notice his hand had not moved from the position he established. “I guess she went to sleep. Sorry.”

“I’ll catch the next show, then,” he grinned. “I’ll be ready, this time, instead of bickering with the baby’s  _ host _ .”

“We weren’t bickering.”

“We are  _ now _ .”

“A little bit of resistance is healthy,” Ezri insisted, moving his hand to one side to further illustrate her point. 

And, indeed, with this new point of resistance, the two of them felt the baby move again. 

“Speaking of growing,” he observed, “our little one seems to be developing right on schedule.”

Ezri knew this was a serious topic for him, for several reasons, so she squeezed his hand. He liked simple, affectionate gestures like that. It felt like  _ family _ . 

“So should the four of us head home?” she asked, quietly. “I think we’d be more comfortable there.”

Julian looked stoically at the couch he had stumbled from, and he could not bring himself to disagree. Whatever comfort that couch had brought him - the patient - could not be matched by the warmth of his wife and daughter, right there in his arms. 

“I  _ quite  _ agree,” he said, and he helped Ezri to her feet. 


End file.
